Book Discussion "Survival of the Richest" by Douglas Rushkoff

Our book for July is Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Team Humanist Douglas Rushkoff.

From Amazon:
Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the “Event”: the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making – as long as they have enough money and the right technology.

In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. [H]e confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations…And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion – QAnon, for example – reinforce the same destructive order.*

"Douglas Rushkoff has always been a singular observer and thinker. Embedded near the epicenters of the digital revolution, he has never flinched from honestly delivering fresh, radical, humane critiques of the emerging world.”
– Kurt Anderson, author of Evil Geniuses